After dropping a close one to the Padres last night, the Phillies will look to take the series win today behind Cole Hamels, who is riding a great season so far in his contract year. There has been some whispers that the Phillies have had some talks with the Blue Jays about Hamels, and Ruben Amaro Jr. even said that the Phillies could become sellers at the trading deadline. If these talks and rumors have any merit whatsoever, Hamels’ days in Philadelphia may be numbered. And that makes me sad.

Getting back to the baseball side of things, Hamels is nearly untouchable to these Padres hitters. Collectively, they have only posted a .194/.235/.302 slash line. Cameron Maybin has had the most success against him, collecting seven hits in twenty-two at-bats, including three doubles and a triple.

For the Padres, Jeff Suppan will take the mound, and he’s only given up one earned run in ten innings this year. However, the Phillies have pretty good numbers against him, with Hunter Pence leading the way with a .412/.545/1.000 slash line against him, with three of his seven hits being home runs. The numbers favor the Phillies, but like most games this year, that won’t mean a thing when the two teams take the field.

Pete’s Brown Ale is a beer from the Bear Republic Beer Co. in California. It’s made with molasses and brown sugar, so it’s bitter, slow and thick. Eat a steak with a sweet potato with this one. – By Brian

The lack of fundamentals is something. I think Chooch just had a brain cramp. He knows the game and has good instincts.
He got bailed out though because as bad as the Phils are right now.
The Padres are just that much worse. This Padres team is on a 63 Mets level ( featuring Richie Ashburn).

Padres Astos Cubs.
Phils have to run off some wins. Because these losers will be playing the Nats and Marlins and Braves later this year when the Phils will be facing real teams.

Getting an extra first round pick won’t be much worse than getting three mid-level prospects. Nobody’s giving up one of their top prospects for a two month rental, and RAJ doesn’t want to go down in Phillies lore as the guy who traded both Cliff Lee and Cole Hamels away. Fans look at homegrown talent a lot differently than they do guys who came up through other systems. Trading Hamels would be a PR disaster, and the Phillies are very PR concious.

If someone offers a Middlebrooks, Arenado, or Rendon type guy (a real blue chip prospect) I’d personally drive Heidi and Cole to the airport, but I don’t see it happening. I also can’t see them having three pitchers making over $20 million (even if it’s just for two seasons). It gives them very little to allocate to the rest of the holes they have.

There best choice would be to try to move Cliff Lee again, but I’m sure they’d need to eat some dollars to make that work. There won’t be many teams lining up to pay a 37 year old pitcher $27.5 million in 2016.

Yes, but Pierre is only batting .351 this year. Dopey will put him back on the bench where he had him last week. You want to set your lineup with your worst hitter at the top and your best hitter on the bench. That’s the way to win.

It’s quite likely that part of that .351 average is because Pierre ISN’T in the lineup all the time. He was signed as a platoon player, and the main reason for platoons is that certain players don’t do well against certain pitchers.

One other factor is John Mayberry. He needs regular playing time if Manuel wants him to improve. He’s also a lot better on defense. He can actually throw runners out, whereas with Pierre, even the shallowest fly ball is a run if there’s a man on 3rd and less than two outs.

I understand that he wants to play Mayberry, so why not play him at 1B and put Pierre in LF? Why is Wiggington out there? He’s the actual platoon player. Pierre has never been a platoon player and has a career avg of .297 Who else on the Phillies has a lifetime avg like that?